After reading several hundred of your lists, a few trends surfaced. For the “What would you want played at your funeral?” category, people tended to be either playful or, dare I say, deadly serious. In the tongue-in-cheek camp were “Stayin’ Alive” (Bee Gees), “It’s My Party” (Leslie Gore), “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” (Meat Loaf), “Happy Together” (The Turtles), “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” (Frank Sinatra), “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” (from The Wizard of Oz) and Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason” (“Give me one reason to stay here/and I’ll turn right back around”). Some traditionalists went for Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Mozart’s Requiem (“The whole thing,” stipulates commenter Diane Flath) or Joan Baez singing “Amazing Grace.” Others saw their end as a journey, choosing songs like “Carefree Highway” (Gordon Lightfoot), “My Ride’s Here” (Warren Zevon), “I’ll Fly Away” (Alison Krauss/Gillian Welch) and “I Will Follow You into the Dark” (Death Cab for Cutie). And still others focused on the finality of it all, with “When the Music’s Over” (The Doors), “In My Time of Dying” (Led Zeppelin), “Into Dust” (Mazzy Star), “All Things Must Pass” (George Harrison) and “Tombstone Blues” (Bob Dylan).

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NPR asked people what song they would like to be played at their funeral, these are some of the responses.